An Update on Finding the Kingdom
And all of my writing.
I wanted to let everyone know why chapter releases are going to slow down for a while.
Over the past several months, my health has made writing and editing far more difficult than it should have been. During that time, I began relying heavily on AI to help with what I intended to be simple editing—grammar, punctuation, and sentence cleanup.
That was the instruction I gave it.
Unfortunately, that isn’t all it did.
Without fully realizing it, I got into the habit of accepting revisions that went well beyond grammar. I would often compare versions briefly, see that the writing sounded smoother, and replace my original prose. I trusted that it was only improving the mechanics.
It wasn’t.
As I’ve begun the process of recording narration and reading every chapter aloud—line by line, sometimes several times over—I’ve realized something that honestly frustrates me.
Little by little, my own writing voice has been drifting away.
Not all at once. Not dramatically. Just a sentence here. A paragraph there. A different rhythm. A different way of handling dialogue. Different word choices. Enough that, over time, the story slowly became less like the one I actually wrote.
And that bothers me.
It bothers me because the people reading Finding the Kingdom deserve my voice—not an AI’s interpretation of what fantasy prose is supposed to sound like.
This isn’t about grammar. I’m still happy to have help catching mistakes. It’s about authorship.
Chapter 4 was the point where I finally stopped and recognized what had been happening. Thankfully, everything after that still exists in my own drafts, but the chapters I’ve already released during some of the hardest months of my health have gradually moved away from the voice I spent years developing.
So I’m stopping.
I’m putting future chapter releases on hold while I work back through the manuscript myself.
The good news is that I’m doing much better mentally than I was during those difficult months. I have the energy again to sit with every page, every paragraph, and every line. I’m also using a different AI in a very different way—not as something that rewrites my work, but as an editor that helps me preserve my own style rather than replace it.
This means the editing process will be slower.
It also means I’m taking ownership of every word again.
Some chapters may change in subtle ways. Others may change more noticeably. The story itself isn’t changing. The characters aren’t changing. What I’m restoring is the voice that first made me want to tell this story.
Thank you for your patience while I do that.
I think the novel—and all the books that follow it—will be stronger because of it.
—RR Madsen
Beautifully, soulfully written. Thank you. I love its poignant honesty and admire you for writing this. Your voice is wonderful, engaging, and there is definitly something "there" that pulls at me. You are 100% right here: "It bothers me because the people reading Finding the Kingdom deserve my voice—not an AI’s interpretation of what fantasy prose is supposed to sound like." We do deserve your true voice. I will definitely be back. May the road rise up to meet you every time you sit down to write.
I found the same thing. I'm recently returned to writing after many years and at first, I was using ChatGPT as an editor. But despite my instructions it kept suggesting revisions, which I sometimes used because I was unsure of my own voice. However, I ultimately found it eroded my sense of accomplishment and pride in my own work, so I stopped. I now use Claude, which obeys my strict instructions not to provide any rewrites and simply advises on readability and flow and obvious mistakes.
The thing I've noticed is that it's too easy to assume that A.I. knows better because it appears as this omniscient thing. Something that broke that illusion was putting the same piece of writing into two A.I.s and seeing what they picked up - and also copying the suggestions of one into the other for an opinion. In fact, they often disagree. So why not just do my own thing regardless?
AI has a very useful role, but it needs to be used as a tool where we retain our own sovereignty, both of knowledge and of voice. For me, I figure out what I'm thinking as I write, so it's important that the words are mine.